Remember last spring when the mysterious Poster Boy was remixing ads in subway stations all over NYC? He would go down into the subway stations, alter the ads with a razor blade really fast, and then run. He got apprehended by the cops a couple times but succeeded in keeping his identity secret à la Banksy. The media took notice and although Poster Boy has been quiet for a while, he got big enough to have his own gallery show a few months ago.
Examples of typical Poster Boy pieces: Hulk Eat, Hungry, Whitey's Biennial. (On a tangential note, I think Whitey's Biennial is hilarious). As you can see, his method was to make a simple, clear political statement just by messing with one or two elements of these ads. It's effective, noticeable, and most importantly, public.
The fact that Poster Boy's art is (or was) on view to everyone is the key to its success. He's dealing with a mass medium (advertising), so his work has to be able to reach a mass audience. It's related directly to the work of culture-jamming groups we read about in the textbook like BLF or BUGA UP. Poster Boy is trying to "jam" the process by which ads reach us and make us want to buy things, by making us question what they're really about.
So, is his work as effective in a gallery? By labeling it as "art" and curating it like any other artwork, are we cordoning it off to a different taste culture? I don't think Poster Boy's message is well served in a gallery. I think his ad remixes work best as populist, anti-commercialist statements, and I don't know if I would even call them "art." What do you think? Is Poster Boy's message diluted by being put in a gallery?
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